


Afterwards

by texastoasted



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: M/M, helmet party, we love a hurt/comfort in this house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:22:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27195080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/texastoasted/pseuds/texastoasted
Summary: What is the point of being the only ones left, in the afterwards, when they have to carry the burden of guilt for surviving? One by one, three remaining mercenaries on RED watched their teammates be struck down by cold, heartless steel. They find out BLU has met the same fate, and banding together to fight the waves of robots might be their only chance at survival.
Relationships: Engineer/Soldier (Team Fortress 2), Heavy/Medic (Team Fortress 2)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 55





	Afterwards

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! it's been a while since i've posted but I had to write this fic for a fellow helmet party loving friend's birthday!! enjoy!  
> *character death does not happen in fic but is mentioned to have happened

_ Part 1 - The Before _

“Engineer.” Misha was rapping his knuckles against the doorframe of the medbay. “Ready?”

“For what?” Dell asked, distracted. 

Misha did not answer him, and for a brief second Dell’s stomach churned - had he forgotten something terribly important? He had been scatterbrained lately, or, at least that was the nicest word he could use. His mind had liquefied, slipping through his fingers like oil, running everywhere. It was more difficult to hold a thought than to chase a horse back into a barn in a thunderstorm. It was surely unlike him to be this way, absent-minded, and that was likely the reason why Misha was looking at him that way. Hardened, tired eyes. Sad, too. They’d been that way for months. 

“We’re meeting up with BLU.”

“Oh, right,” Dell said, and mentally chastised himself. He wiped his hands on his pants. The medbay was a mess - sheets and towels everywhere, some bloodstained. Far up in the rafters came melancholy dove cooing. He’d asked Jeremy to help clearing the towels out, but then had felt awful at the look on the other mercenary’s face. But none of them wanted to do it, really. Were they supposed to clean up and act like nothing had ever happened? He wondered, suddenly, how BLU was doing. Surely they had been feeling the same way. Would it be fucked up for them to see the counterparts of their respective positions, not only up close but talking and trying to work together? It was surely going to be fucked up for him. 

He and Misha walked down the hallway of the base - normally, when they’d been fighting, the base was filled with the sounds of distant record players or radios, and chatter. Balls being smacked against bats, mechanical whirring, the sounds of life. It was deadened now, the life taken out of it, as cold and metal and lifeless as the things that threatened to overwhelm them. Dell couldn’t remember whose idea it had been to come together, but it didn’t matter. The best inventions were born out of necessity, and it had been obvious - they wouldn’t survive this as fractured teams. Initially, the Administrator had tried to keep them apart. Dell figured it was to maintain the image that this would all be over soon, and when the last robot was dead, they would go back to crushing each others’ skulls. But it hadn’t ended, only gotten worse. There were casualties. Gray had intel, and the worst kind, that targeted their respawn system before they even knew anything was wrong with it.

He had held eye contact with Medic, his friend, when he died. There had been no shock on his face when he went- why would there be? Nothing was out of the ordinary. A little furrowing of his brow from the pain, but plastered across his face was the brazen confidence of a man who would come back swinging for another ten thousand times. The ignorance must’ve been bliss. Now it was only the fucking three of them -  _ three _ of them. They had gone down one by one, holding off wave after wave, and now it was the three of them. 

Dell had heard BLU only had three left, too. He wasn’t sure who.

It had been perhaps Pyro who had hit him hardest. Over all the years they’d spent together, he’d call every single one of his teammates a true and honest friend, but Pyro was a little different, a little deeper. He’d taken a liking to the bubbly firestarter when they’d first arrived, and the mercenary had taken a particular liking to watching his back, too. Dell even felt protective of them, of whoever was under that suit. He’d gotten the sense they had no family, maybe had been running from something, and this team was all they had. Pyro had been the most recent of them to go, and they had known the implications of what happened if any one of them got injured. They had gotten separated. Dell had known it the instant he realized it had been too long since Pyro should have come back from hunting down the robot Engineer, and he whipped his head around, finally spotting the mercenary near across the field. There was no way to make it back across in time. Misha had seen it too, and was shouting, revving his gun. The twin lenses in their mask reflected the afternoon sun, and then the flood of robots was upon him like a tidal wave, snuffing out that light in a blink of an eye. It was like one side of his heart had been ripped away.

“Engineer?” Misha had stopped and was looking down at him, his heavy footfalls fading into nothingness. No, he’d stopped because Dell had stopped, one hand on the wall, other on his chest. He was breathing hard.

“I’m fine,” he managed, and forced himself to keep going.

He would have taken any of their places. It was the curse of the survivor to be the last, to be around to mourn the men you had fought with for years, drank with, talked with, played music with under the stars. He didn’t fucking want to be around anymore. But there was no way in hell Dell could abandon Misha and Jeremy. He had confidence in Jeremy as a merc, but the events of the past few months had absolutely shattered him. Misha, maybe, would be okay for a while. But they stood a better chance the more of them there were, that much was obvious. 

It wasn’t going to be easy to be so friendly with BLU. At the end of the day, Dell knew it was little more than that woman’s pointed finger and a paycheck that kept them baying like dogs for blood. They didn’t have anything against each other outside of this. But at the same time, they’d both done nasty shit to each other that kept the hatred real. It was impossible for either side to completely wipe the slate clean, even if the war wasn’t anything personal. The thought of saving one of the BLU lives was so backwards, but it was saving the lives of Misha and Jeremy, too. 

They were supposed to meet at an abandoned gas station. Townsfolk had been driven from this town when the robots spilled over. They were there early - it hadn’t taken them long to walk over from the base that they were holed up in, and it hadn’t sounded like BLU was far either. It was like the town was stopped in time, preserved the way it was, and the two of them were scuffling along, kicking up dust that had been ready to lay undisturbed forever.

“Is Jeremy-”

“Sleeping,” Misha answered curtly. “Will brief him later.”

That was probably for the best.

“They are on time,” Misha said, not bothering to conceal the note of surprise in his voice. “Look.”

The three mercenaries coming at them across the parking lot were a sorry sight, but Dell was sure he and Misha didn’t look much better. He recognized them instantly - the Soldier, Medic, and Demo. Something in him twinged upon seeing their dirtied and scratched up faces, sadness and anger all at once. They looked similar enough to the mercenaries on his own team to provoke that reaction. He’d never gotten an answer out of the Administrator about that one, whether BLU was clones of them or they had just searched the world in some sick joke to find men that looked near exactly like them. That was definitely something they’d wondered about, over some beers. Would the other Engineer have his scars, his memories, his past? Maybe that’s why it was so easy to kill each other. Wasn’t natural, seeing your doppelganger every day. 

“RED,” the BLU Medic greeted them, with a short not. “Is there only...the two of you?”

“Our Scout is back at base,” Dell answered. Misha had crossed his arms.

“Well, then. Hope six of us will be enough to finally end this.” the BLU Demo said, almost cheerfully. Dell thought there might have been a concealed hardness in his voice, a hidden meaning.  _ Maybe we should have done this sooner, so our teammates didn’t die.  _

They agreed to go back to the BLU base - theirs was pretty shredded anyway. Dell did worry about what would happen to Jeremy, if something happened to them on the way and they never came back, him all curled up under the sparse blankets they had that weren’t bloodstained. He couldn’t think about that.

A short walk later they were at a looming building that mirrored the one that they were staying in, except with more lights on. Dell imagined how he might’ve felt if BLU had kept more of their mercs alive - inferior? Bad at his job? 

“ _ Wilkommen _ ,” their Medic said, spreading his arms wide. “It isn’t much, but I’m sure you’ve seen it all before.”

_ Part 2 - The During _

“You smoke?” Dell asked, surprise plain in his voice. 

One eye appeared under the shadow that overcast half of his face, looking at him gruffly, and then it disappeared. A lone plume of smoke curled up from his mouth, curling around the brim of his helmet. 

“There a problem with that, private?”

“No,” Dell answered, with a small chuckle. “Just surprised me, is all. Our Soldier didn’t.”

He continued on his way to hang their freshly washed clothes on the line he’d strung up. They didn’t have much need for uniforms anymore, but they were the best to work in. It felt like an absurdly domestic task to be pinning clothes up, and he almost wanted to berate the Soldier for smoking near them. His mother would scold his father something fierce.  _ The smoke’ll get in the clothes, Fred! Then in the house! Then in the bed!  _ He allowed himself a small smile at the memory.

The Soldier was watching him. When he noticed Dell looking he averted his gaze.

Things between the former two teams had been surprisingly efficient. The BLU Demo had been happy to drink with whomever wanted to, and he had spent a lot of time with the BLU Medic, making plans and talking equipment. Their Soldier had been a little harder to reach, but their own had never been overly friendly. Some men just held on to old grudges, Dell supposed. But they were doing better now that they were together, they were gaining ground. They were able to establish lines to scavenge behind, for him to stockpile metal and for the others to get supplies, and they finally weren’t out of beer. It made not thinking about the probability of their own impending deaths at night a hell of a lot easier. Even Jeremy had begun to crack a smile again. The Demo would often reel him into card games. Maybe he noticed the merc’s mood, or maybe not. Dell made sure to give him a small nod whenever they made eye contact just in case.

Things must have been hard at the beginning for Misha, too. He and their Medic had always been close. There was some awkwardness between him and the new Medic, who had lost his Heavy in turn. But if it was there now, it was concealed well.

“Your Soldier,” the mercenary suddenly spoke, in a gruff voice, “was he American?”

It was such a Soldier question to ask that Dell couldn’t help himself, he laughed, dropping the milk crate filled with clothes and holding his stomach. He caught a glimpse of the bemused man, because it  _ had _ been an honest question, and that made Dell laugh even harder. He wiped a tear from his eye.

“Yes,” he managed finally, “American as a ballgame.” 

“Good,” came the answer. There might’ve been a wisp of a smile. Soldier dropped the cigarette and ground it under the heel of his boot, but didn’t go inside, something which Dell noticed but did not comment on. He could feel the man’s eyes on him, on his back. Soldier wanted to ask him something.

Sure enough, it came. “And you, soldier...where are you from?”

“Bee Cave, Texas.”

Hesitation. That wasn’t the answer the other man had been expecting. Why had he felt like Soldier would know? Because he was still half looking at him like his friend, but after he’d spent some time around him,  _ any _ of the BLUs, really, they were definitely different. In mannerisms, accent, everything. Not major differences, but they were there. It was bizarre, to be making breakfast, and making Medic a cup of coffee just how he liked it, because of course he was sitting right there. But the other man would clearly wrinkle his nose, and Dell would feel like he was having a stroke for a moment. 

There was a grunt from Soldier. “Our Engie...Alabama.”

Alabama. The different coffee and slightly different mannerisms and accents didn’t really tell him shit. They could’ve been different people, born in different places, or they could’ve been clones with different injected memories so they didn’t go crazy. Dell’s head was beginning to hurt, and he shook the thought away. This line of thinking never got anywhere. 

Dell realized he hadn’t said anything. “Huh,” he said. “Never been.”

He stood there for a moment, having finished pinning up the clothes, watching them sway gently in the wind. An assortment of tattered and burnt clothes, faded red and blue. Without another word, he picked up the crate and went inside.

A couple of weeks later they were sitting around the kitchen table. They wouldn’t have dared to get drunk before, when things were so uncertain, but they’d figured out the pattern of waves by now, and the next one wouldn’t come for at least a couple days. The massive tank-thing in the distance had closed its maw and would not reopen, shutting itself in with a hiss of defeat.

“Nah,” The BLU Demo was saying -  _ Dunn _ , Dell remembered. “Never had anyone steady. Just me dad, after me mum passed away. Can’t bring a lassie home when he’s swinging swords around, blind as a bat.”

They all laughed at that. Dell took another swig of his beer.

“What about you?” Dunn was pointing at him, and Dell almost choked in his effort to swallow quickly. “You seem like you’d have someone, back home.”

“Never got around to that, I suppose,” Dell answered truthfully. “Would’ve loved to retire on the ranch, married, with a couple dogs. But I was always too busy to be going out. ‘Round the eighth doctorate, sort of gave up, I suppose.”

The BLU Medic, Tobias, was nodding. Jeremy was resting his face on the table.

“What about your type, then?”

Dell became aware that the Soldier was looking at him, the nameless Soldier, who hadn’t shared when they had gotten around to it and just told them to call him Jane Doe. Fuck. It was impossible to deny he felt differently about the mercenary than he did the other members of the team, but what could he do, right now? They thought they might die every week. It was messing with his head, too. Nothing had ever happened between him and his Soldier. Of course they’d gotten to know each other over the years, and maybe there’d been a little flirting on his side, but the ball stopped rolling. Dell had been able to accept that the man was either a dedicated professional or simply not interested. But this Soldier was also different. Hardened, a little more rough around the edges. Quiet. He didn’t bellow so much, waking them all up at six in the morning. And he was smart, too. Whip smart. He often was leading the strategy talk, while Dell and Tobias talked gear. It was hot. The more time Dell spent with what very well could be his Soldier’s clone, the more he became aware how different they were. 

Fuck. He was kinda drunk. Dell could feel it in the way his movements bled together, how warm he was, the way that his head swung way too far if he moved it. Fuck it. He could be dead in a week.

“I like the strong, silent types,” he blurted out. 

“Fair,” Dunn said. Soldier was taking a long drink of his beer, and Dell couldn’t see his face behind it.

“Sorry, Engineer,” Misha said suddenly, with humor in his voice. “I am taken.”

Tobias let out a shrill giggle. Dell shook his head and grinned, raising his beer in a toast.

His head was spinning. Dell was breathing fast, but it didn’t matter, no oxygen was reaching his brain, air was whooshing in and out of his lungs without doing its job. He clutched his hand to his chest, struggling desperately to latch on to any passing thought that made its way through the panic. He had to find Tobias, he was dying-

“Are you fit for combat, soldier?” someone was asking in a gravelly voice. Dell whipped his head around.

“What?” he gasped. “What the hell are you askin’ me?”

“Do you need the doctor?”

Dell couldn’t think.

“Are you all right?” Soldier was crouching down next to him. He was saying something, putting his hand over Dell’s own on his overalls, the overalls that were spattered with blood because he’d nearly watched Jeremy die in front of him, Jeremy, whose condition was uncertain, who had gone months without having to experience the threat of death, and it was now looming over him, when they had thought things were okay and they would maybe make it out of this, Jeremy, who hadn’t been able to make a phone call for almost a year but was starting to talk about tracking down his mother again, who he’d been half avoiding with the news about their Spy-

He was crying and then his face was buried in a blue knit sweater that smelled unwashed. It was comforting, in its own way, the human-ness of the smell.

Soldier let him go but held him at arm’s length, mouth twisted slightly, as if he was wary Dell was about to drop dead on him. For all it felt like, he could have.

“I’m sorry,” Dell managed to say. “I just panicked.”

“About your Scout?”

“Yeah.”

Soldier sat back. Dell could see a glimpse of his eyes, downturned and hardened, before his helmet swung back over them. 

“He will be fine.”

“It’s just...haven’t felt this way in months, you know? Almost forgot about the danger. Almost forgot we were mortal again. I felt like things plateaued, like we had gotten a handle on how to beat these damn things, that we were winning. But we’re flesh and they’re not. We were starting to talk about afterwards, like there was gonna be an afterwards.”

Dell was rambling. He rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Sorry.”

“I understand,” Soldier said.

Dell looked at him.

“It seems ridiculous now, doesn’t it?” The other mercenary let out a gruff chuckle. “What we were fighting over. What our war was.”

“Did you ever have an afterward?” Dell asked him, resting his arms on his knees.

Soldier seemed to study the ground. “No,” he answered shortly. “You?”

“I suppose. Was gonna go back to the family ranch in Texas. Retire stupid rich, buy a whole bunch of stuff to build things I could never afford. Suppose the Administrator might end up hunting me down one day if I couldn’t stand never using a teleporter again, but, well…” he trailed off. “It’s just bizarre. We never had to care about dying, really. Sure, we all had nightmares about the respawn system shutting off without warning, but what can you do but get up and go to work as usual with a contract like that? And now, it’s real. We’re men again. And I’m afraid to do anything, because I really might die tomorrow. I can’t even hope anymore, or think about the afterwards, because it ain’t just us blowing each other to bits for more money than we might live long enough to spend.”

“We are fighting a real enemy.” Soldier said quietly.

“Yeah,” Dell assented. “That’s just it.”

The two of them sat there, in a companionable silence. Dell would have felt awkward about spilling his deepest fears to the quietest man on the team, but he could feel somehow that Soldier was right there with him, that he agreed. He had wanted to add a lot of other things, that he had complicated feelings- who was he to make things awkward before they all might die? It reminded him of the one time they had all thought they really might be done for, with the tumors. He’d put himself to work with their Medic, unwilling to roll over and die that easily after everything they’d been through, but of course he had thoughts about everything he’d never done. Of course, that was the time to be impulsive and do it. But was it just a silly crush, a desperate attachment because they thought they could be shot full of holes at any moment? Would it be over with the danger? 

“I should go check on Jeremy,” Dell said, and got to his feet. “Uh, well...thank you. For letting me talk your ear off.”

Soldier looked up at him, his helmet tilted so Dell could see one of his blue eyes. “Whenever you need it,” he said, and the serious look on his face made Dell blush so hard he had to turn away.

_ Part 3 - The Afterwards _

They had gotten good news. The situation was under control. Well, as under control as it could be. But they were getting outside help, people were stepping back in, and they were going to get the hell out of there. Respawn had even been back on for a week. None of them had dared to test it - there were old, morbid jokes about taking care of a hangover “their” way. The same jokes that Dell’s team used to make, the BLUs did. It was some sort of god, immortal privilege, to do away with an ailment by killing yourself and then walking out of respawn good as new. That wasn’t always the way it worked, you had to time it right. The copies updated every so often, so sometimes getting rid of a cold wasn’t that easy. But no one wanted to test it, really. 

They had gotten a lot of beer in their supply shipment. It was a night to celebrate.

Dell had stopped feeling like they were REDs and BLUs - of course, he and Jeremy and Misha sometimes referred to the other three men that way, out of habit. But it wasn’t that way anymore, they weren’t divided. Of course, Dell didn’t really expect them to be. They had all gotten into this type of work for one reason or another, but they all had similar reasons. Taking care of family. Freedom to experiment. Money. Stability. They could all relate. Dell didn’t exactly know if he would ever get an answer to his question about their similarities, but he didn’t care anymore. It was bizarre to think about some things, like if they would ever go back to work, to see each other again and have to get to know new mercenaries. But Dell doubted it, at least for a long, long while. Shit needed to be sorted again, and at that point, he wasn’t sure if he’d come back. Misha was going back to Russia, and likely taking the doctor with him. Jeremy and Dunn had families, and he had his ranch. Soldier, who knew. It was hard to say if the letters and phone calls would falter over the years, if some of them realized that it was easier to leave that part of their life behind, and the men that had been in it with it. It was easier to accept that happening with the rest of the mercenaries, but he was perturbed by Soldier. He wasn’t one to let opportunities slip up. That was the type of thing that would keep him up at night - what could have been. That didn’t mean Dell had an untapped spring of boundless confidence, however - he had to work up the nerve to say something.

They were pretty drunk, perched on hay bales around the campfire. It was a familiar setting to a way they’d pass time when he was surrounded by his fellow REDs, sometimes by making jokes about the BLUs, but those were long gone. He didn’t have his banjo, but Misha had found a harmonica somewhere in the base, and Tobias was playing it. 

It was starting to sound a little sad. A song was coming out before Dell could catch it, tumbling out from between his lips. Something he’d heard on the radio a thousand times in his workshop, an old country song that Jeremy would roll his eyes at.  _ That’s old-timer shit _ .  _ You’re gonna get older just by listening to it. _ Tobias was watching him with half an eye, changing his tune to match the song. Fuck, this song always made him emotional, even though he’d never been to West Virginia. But everyone had their own country roads somewhere.

He finished the song, Tobias trailing off on the harmonica. Jeremy was passed out in his camp chair, Dunn looked lost in thought, and Misha was asleep on Tobias’s shoulder. 

Soldier was looking at him, though, with his lips slightly parted. Dell felt his stomach twist. He was being looked at like Soldier had never seen him before, and the expression was so downright intense that it was making him blush. Shit, if he had to call it something, it’d be lovestruck. But that was him, surely, projecting. 

Dell cleared his throat and got to his feet, staggering a little. “It’s late,” he said, a little awkwardly. 

“That was really good,” Soldier said, very loudly.

Dell met his eyes. “Thanks,” he answered softly, rubbing the back of his head. He could feel himself swaying a little, as if the alcohol he’d drunk was a physical breeze pushing him to and fro. They looked at each other. The fire popped and crackled, making light dance in the shadows on their faces. Dell felt himself holding his breath. Was he waiting for something, something that he didn’t want to articulate? Damn. He was. He was almost catching Soldier’s eye, underneath his helmet, it could have been the shadows but it looked like he was opening up his mouth to say something, but then the fire popped again and Dunn woke up with a loud grunt and the moment was over.

Dell was one of the first to drag himself out of bed in the morning. He’d laid there for a while, eyes cracked half open, debating on going back to sleep for half the afternoon. But his throat was parched, and a cup of coffee always helped him kick a hangover. Tobias was already awake when he shuffled into the kitchen, sitting with his hands folded around a cup of dark brew, staring intently into its depth.

“Mornin’,” Dell said, and yawned. “Any more coffee-”

“I got another phone call this morning.”

“Oh?”

“From upstairs.” Tobias looked at him. His expression was difficult to place. “We’re getting out of here, tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Dell felt lightheaded. “What...that’s no time at all.”

He didn’t know if he meant  _ to pack, to say goodbye, to call the caretaker of the old ranch and let them know he was coming back _ , but Tobias was nodding as if he understood him perfectly. 

The rest of the mercenaries took the news the same way Dell had felt. A mix of shock, relief, and uncertainty. Some of them had their hands clapped to their faces, some wouldn’t stop uttering little laughs. It wasn’t exactly in their employee handbook on how to take such news. 

Well, shit, he was supposed to pack. What would they even let him take? Was all of it considered secret company property, and be torched in a giant pile the minute they left the premises? His head was starting to spin again.

“Dell?” came an unrecognizable voice from behind him.

He spun around. It was Soldier, who’d  _ never  _ called him by his name, nor spoke in such a quiet tone of voice. Dell swallowed dryly. He’d been so caught up in the news that they had to move, he hadn’t stopped to think that eventually he would have to say goodbye to everyone, to have actual last conversations. This could be it, right now. He was sweating. What was he going to say?

“Yeah?” 

“Don’t forget your laundry.” He raised a pile of clothes. “They were out on the line.”

“Oh,” Dell said, and laughed a little. He scratched the back of his head. “Thanks.”

That was it, then.

Soldier was lingering by the door. Dell felt his stomach twist painfully.

“Uh...Soldier?”

“Yes, private?”

“Did you…?” his voice was hoarse. “Did you find a place to go tomorrow?”

It was too hard to read his expression. “No.”

“Well, if you need somewhere...lot of space of my ranch.”

There was no answer. Dell felt sweat appear on his palms. “Only until you find somewhere, of course. As long as you want. Or you don’t have to at all. All this money we’ve got, I bet you could move in to the finest hotel in town. Or-”

“I would like to come with you,” Soldier said quickly. “Thank you. Maggot.”

“Of course,” he said, and smiled. “Of course. Be more than happy to have you in my afterwards.”


End file.
